School of Public Affairs

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The School of Public Affairs at the University of Colorado Denver houses several policy research centers and additional faculty research programs with P-20 education connections.The list that follows provides descriptions and contact/website information where available.Know of something that is not detailed here?Please contact us at any time to add to this list.

The Buechner Institute for Governance (B.I.G) is the overaching research, policy and practice website for the School of Public Affairs. BIG's website houses information on policy centers and professional and leadership development opportunities in the School of Public Affairs.

The Center’s goal is to end domestic violence by fostering institutional and social change through leadership development, education, research and community collaboration. Currently the Center is working on a grant to utilize TANF (Temporary Assistance to Needy Families) to train school counselors, nurses and teachers on how to better identify and provide the appropriate resources to a child who is experiencing DV in the home. Recently, the Colorado Statewide Strategic Use Fund awarded a grant to an interdisciplinary team from the Center on Domestic Violence and School of Education to carry out a project called END Violence. Through this project, five domestic violence specialists will be hired and trained, who will then train and assist personnel such as the school nurse, counselor, and social worker in 25 schools along the Front Range – at no cost to the school. Once trained, these school personnel, with the help of the on-site DV specialist, will be better equipped to identify students who have witnessed domestic violence, facilitate access to intervention services for child victims and their families, and coordinate educational training programs in the school that encourage healthy relationship and teach conflict resolution skills. Both the schools and students will benefit.

CEPA's mission is to provide applied research and program evaluation, strategic planning, and facilitation that enhance the capacity of local and national education communities to make informed decisions and solve problems, especially to ensure the most efficacious use of public resources and improve access and outcomes for disadvantaged populations. CEPA focuses on preK-12 policy issues, (governance, finance, leadership, management, standards development, school readiness, parent involvement, school choice, competition and parent information issues) and higher education systems integration issues. CEPA staff employ their diverse educational and professional backgrounds when working with communities and organizations to provide applied research and program evaluation, and, planning and problem solving assistance.

The following is a list of recently completed or current projects by CEPA and the clients/organizations they served -

Colorado Children’s Campaign: • Symposium and set of commissioned papers on the uses of data systems that allow linking teacher and student information. • White paper on literature review and initial analysis of the relationship between tax and spending limitations and poverty.

Colorado Department of Education Title III: Preparation of a plan for Colorado Department of Education on strategies to help districts improve teacher quality.

Denver Public Schools: • Evaluation of the innovative Denver ProComp teacher pay system• Formative evaluation of the Far Northeast Principals Leadership Council in Denver Public Schools. This collaborative is working to build school leadership capacity to improve student outcomes.

Jefferson County Schools: Research on the resources used for music education in Jefferson County School District and its correlation with music programs and school level student outcomes

Student Centered Funding: Evaluate the changes in state law necessary to implement school budgeting systems to support school level equity and program improvement.

National Governor’s Association: • Support the Colorado STEM Network at the state and local level. At the state level work with the Governor’s staff to support the P-20 Council. At the local level provide technical assistance to Compacts working to build support for STEM education. • Support the development of a STEM communications plan to support increased STEM post-secondary education

Colorado State Report Card by CEPA: Develop and print a report card on the Colorado education system (funded in collaboration with Donnell Kay

Department of Higher Education: • Support the Department of Higher Education in a 18 month planning project to improve degree completion by adults who did not complete college. Funded under the “Non-Traditional No More” project of the Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education (WICHE).

WIRED Council: Staff the Metro Denver WIRED Initiative. A US Department of Labor funded initiative to support the development of integrated regional economies.

Denver Scholarship Foundation: Provide technical assistance to the Denver Scholarship Foundation and Challenge Denver on the development of internal evaluation and improvement processes.

Padres Unidos: Help Padres Unidos identify effective practices for accelerating the learning of students in middle grades.

The following is a link to a page with a complete listing ofCEPA Staff .

The Center on Reinventing Public Education (CRPE) Denver was created in 2007, as part of the School of Public Affairs at the University of Colorado Denver. It is a satellite office of Center on Reinventing Public Education, which for 15 years has been one of the nation’s leading think tanks on new approaches to education reform. Under the leadership of Paul Hill, CRPE’s national program of research and analysis examines a range of alternatives that rethink and challenge current systems in urban school systems. UCD’s Center for Education Policy Analysis (CEPA) staffs CRPE Denver. Dr. Paul Teske, Dean of UCD's School of Public Affairs, directs CRPE Denver.

CU Denver received a prestigious $3.2M Integrative Graduate Education and Research Traineeship (IGERT) grant from the National Science Foundation to develop an innovative inter-disciplinary graduate program on sustainable urban infrastructure. The award supports 26 doctoral students during the five-year grant period from 2007-2012. The graduate program, the first of its kind in the country for its breadth across disciplines, spans the Colleges of Engineering, Architecture and Planning, Public Affairs, and Liberal Arts and Sciences.